Five years had passed since The Atlantic's McKay Coppins attended a Trump rally, so earlier this month he decided to revisit the movable asylum. He suggests that we do the same. "Not as a supporter or as a protester, necessarily, but as an observer. Take in the scene. Talk to his fans.... Consider it an act of civic hygiene," he writes. Thank you for the invite, Mr. Coppins, but I'll just shower while pondering Article II of the Constitution.
As I read his opening paragraphs I fell under the impression he'd report conversations with the "fans." This was not the case. Only one chat made his article, and it was enough to change his initial impression of the rally-goers' "wholesome, church-barbecue vibe" to "the darker undercurrent [he] remembered from past rallies."
Coppins' interlocutor was a 71-year-old retired nurse — one I'm really glad is out of the healthcare racket. Because she's crackers. In Coppins' words, she told him that "if the Democrats try to steal the election again in 2024 ... the Trump-sympathetic elements of the military might need to seize control."
To explain that wholly reality-detached statement, in her mind, Trump is still in charge of the military. And in her words: "I think behind the scenes he maybe is doing a little more than what we know about. Military-wise," she said. "I hope he’s guiding the military to be able to step in and do what they need to do." If I had any Thorazine, I'd rush her some.
From there Coppins moves on to the candidate. Some of this reporting is the all-too familiar stuff: Trump called Biden admin officials "idiots" and "lunatics" and "bad people"; he fear-mongered the immigrant "invasion" by sounding like Bull Connor — "They’re occupying schools … they’re sitting with your children"; and he's still hung up on President Obama, whom he called "Barack Hussein Obama."
Coppins also notes what I note here, that being "the sheer loathsomeness of the paleolithic lowlifes in the crowd." Or at least that was my take. After writing that he'd "forgotten how casually [Trump] swears from the podium," Coppins had also forgotten "how casually people in the crowd swear back." He relates that "throughout the speech, two young men near the front repeatedly screamed 'Fuck Biden!' prompting a wave of naughty giggles from others in the crowd." There's something so impeccably Trumpian about that.
The Atlantic's Coppins finishes with a personal observation that screams out for a few of those confabs with rally-goers — which are absent. He writes that Trump "seems to have lost the instinct for entertainment that once made him so interesting to audiences.... His tendency to get lost in rhetorical cul-de-sacs of self-pity and anger wears thin.... There is a rote quality now to his darkest rhetoric that I found more unnerving than when it used to command wall-to-wall news coverage."
Yes his dark rhetoric is unnerving and his self-pity wears even thinner and he's hardly entertaining — to Coppins, to me, to you, just as we've been unnerved for seven years. But what about the rallying Trumpers? What's their impression of the megalomaniac seven years later? Do they find him less entertaining? Are any of them even faintly unnerved by his darkest rhetoric? That's what I wanted to know.
I guess Mr. Coppins meant it when he "propose[d] a 2024 resolution for politically engaged Americans: Go to a Trump rally." I was hoping he would answer the above questions for me. Alas, he's leaving us on our own. For a reporter, that ain't cricket.
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